Riffling Through—and Interpreting—Old “Mango” Recipes

Because we got so many varicolored peppers in this week’s share, my mom called me looking for an old recipe for relish made from mangoes—an old name for sweet peppers—that she had given me. It took a little while, but I found it typed on its original 3 x 5 index card, probably from the 1960s. I sent it to her, and then decided I’d put it on the blog, too. It’s quite succinct, but I’ll warn you—a fifty-year-old recipe needs a little interpretation, which follows. Also, I’ve halved the recipe (it originally called for two dozen “mangoes”) but you can easily double this if the peppers keep coming.

Uphouse[1] Mango[2] Relish

1 dozen red and green MANGOES (soak in HOT water[3])
8 lg. onions[4]
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp. salt
1/2 Tbsp. white mustard seed
1/2 Tbsp. celery seed
1 cup white vinegar

Put all peppers thru food chopper with a large knife[5] and cover with boiling water[6]. Let stand 10 minutes. Add onions and rest of ingredients. Cook 10 minutes and seal hot[7].

1. My grandparents’ neighbors were called the Uphouses, and as a kid I assumed it was because they lived in a house up at the top of my grandparents’ yard, but it turns out their name actually was “Uphouse.”
2. When I was a kid, we didn’t have green peppers; they were called mangoes. I’m told that no one around here ever ate tropical mangoes, but as green peppers turned orange and red, they looked a little like those tropical fruit, and so they got the name. I expect a few people still call them mangoes, but this mango relish uses green and red peppers. I’m sure you can substitute purple and white peppers as well.
3. I don’t know what this direction means. Do you soak them before you chop them, or after? I just don’t know.
4. My guess is you want to chop the onions, too.
5. A food chopper with a large knife—sounds like a proto-food processor, so I’m assuming you could chop them, pulsing before they turn to mush, or use a knife or some other chopping device.
6. How much boiling water? Hmmm. To cover. And it never says to drain the water. Do you? Or do you just throw in the sugar, salt, seeds, and vinegar on top of that water? Another mystery.
7. Seal hot is concise shorthand for a canning process—you want to put the hot mixture in sterilized jars, put on the lids and rings, and then put the jars in a boiling water bath. Since it has vinegar in the mixture, you don’t need to pressure can the relish, as it’s acidic. Probably best to leave it in the boiling water bath for 5 to 10 minutes. When you take the jars out, you should hear them click as the seal forms.

If you expect to eat the relish with a couple of weeks, you can probably safely put it in sterilized jars and refrigerate it without canning. And let me know if you figure out the hot water soak and whether or not to drain the boiling water. I’ll probably give it a try at some point, so if I figure it out I’ll post an addendum to this blog entry, too. One final note: As I recall, this relish is really delicious, well worth trying with our large "mango" harvest.

Do Chua: Asian Pickling, Part II

There’s a new Vietnamese restaurant down at Findlay Market that sells Bahn Mi (a French-Asian baguette sandwich), and one of the garnishes they use is a carrot and daikon radish pickle called Do Chua. Turns out it’s really easy to make at home, especially if you have a lot of daikon radishes from your CSA share.

This recipe makes about two cups of pickle (fits nicely into an applesauce jar). You can make more or less, but there should be more daikon than radish—the suggested ratio is 2:1. You need about 3 carrots and 6 to 8 daikon radishes, no more than 2 inches in diameter. The classic way is to peel them and cut them into matchsticks, but I'm here to tell you, it’s a pain in the neck to cut round things into matchsticks. Some recipes call for grating or shredding the peeled carrots and radishes, maybe even using a food processor, and I might try that next time.

After you make those nice little matchsticks, the next step is to put them in a bowl and sprinkle them with 1 teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of sugar. Use your hands to knead the vegetables for about 3 minutes. This expels a lot of the water from the vegetables, and as they soften you’ll see a pool of liquid forming at the bottom of the bowl. You can stop kneading when you can bend a piece of daikon so that the ends touch but it doesn’t break. Then drain them in a colander and rinse under cold running water. Press out the extra water so the vegetables are as dry as possible, then pack them in a clean jar.

To make the brine, put about 1/2 cup warm water in a big 2-cup measuring cup or some other container with a pouring spout. Add 3/4 cup distilled white vinegar (or rice vinegar) and 3/8 cup sugar, then stir to dissolve the sugar. Pour the brine over the vegetables to cover. Let the vegetables marinate in the brine for at least 1 hour before eating. They will keep in the refrigerator for up to 4 weeks.